The Deluge
by delictabledahlia
Summary: Azula finds out she can't conquer love; Ty Lee finds out that love can't conquer all. For Tyzula Week.
1. Handwriting

**_AN:_** _Woooo! It's Tyzula Week._

 ** _Pairing:_** _Azula/Ty Lee._

 ** _Warnings:_** _Extreme abuse, violence, character death and mild sexual content._

* * *

 **The Deluge  
(Or: Lullabies for the Monster Under Your Bed)  
**

 **by delictabledahlia  
**

* * *

 **Handwriting**

Zuko stares at the cacography of the Imperial Officer.

The quick, bulleted notes and the misspellings give Zuko something else to think about than the horrible mess. He cannot stop the urge to hurl; he has been withholding vomit since he found out about what happened. No one else is doing much better, even the police who should be detached.

He is going to have to answer for it legally, but he tries to keep that out of his mind.

"I don't..." he says as he sees Mai slowly walking towards him.

He doesn't know what was going to come next but it could be any number of things and still work. He is shocked. He is horrified. He does not know what to say about the horrific sight within those beautiful walls past that very well kept garden of pink flowers.

Silent tears roll from Mai's eyes.

Zuko has never seen her cry.

But Mai can barely keep from sobbing.

* * *

 **Years before** an Imperial Officer was taking messy notes on a crime spree, Ty Lee and Azula are sitting in a sunny teashop on a very ordinary morning.

Ty Lee never knew Azula could do that. Could make those words just _fit_ right onto nothing more than a napkin that has a splotch of water gradually spreading across the flimsy paper.

"Can I borrow your handwriting next time I need to do anything?" Ty Lee asks brightly with a bat of her eyelashes. Azula shrugs and goes back to it as Ty Lee nearly falls out of her chair trying to read it upside down.

She is distant. Ty Lee does not like that at all and it really scares her so much and she wants to scream so bad but she can't. She wants to shake Azula so bad but she can't because shaking the heir to the throne is definitely frowned upon in society and so she just reads those words spreading across the rapidly decaying napkin like black spider webs.

It is a to-do list. Ty Lee pretends it is poetry because it looks way too pretty to be a to-do list.

But then Ty Lee looks past the gorgeous letters and sees what it is about. "You're ready?"

"Not necessarily. I have to get it approved by the legal system," Azula says, her eyes not lifting from the list. Ty Lee offers a tiny smile that Azula does not return.

Ty Lee suggests, "We don't have to run that far to get away. We could stay in the country, if that helps the verdict at all," as the homely waitress brings them their tea.

"It might." Azula shrugs and then sighs dreamily. Ty Lee is enraptured by her every move, as she continues to fixate her gaze on the list. She _is_ wishing that Azula were talking to her instead of that, but she is way too excited about what is to come for the both of them.

Ty Lee dropped everything and went to help Azula recover as soon as she possibly could. They spent so long together as Azula lived the life of a rubber band and Ty Lee lived a life in a powder keg giving off sparks. It was complete turmoil, but they fell in love, of course.

Or maybe back in love.

Ty Lee smiles with a dreamy mist in her eyes.

This life with Azula will be perfect, because she _made_ Azula better and changed and redeemed and now it is finally time for their happily ever after.

* * *

"You probably can't leave the Fire Nation," Zuko says, rubbing the back of his neck. "I definitely can't make that happen no matter what I do."

Azula sits in front of him, her lips pursed and her eyes expectant. She looks on the verge of negotiation, and while Zuko may have become a talented negotiator in years past, he does not want to get into that with her. She just toys with the ink brush in her slightly stained hands.

The ink is a reddish color, and it looks like fresh blood against her ivory skin.

"I don't need to leave the Fire Nation. I don't even want to leave home," Azula replies and her voice is needlessly cold and bitter. "I'm doing this because apparently she wants to leave the luxury of the palace..."

"And go to the luxury of some distant presumably royal property?" Zuko narrows his eyes but quickly snaps back to a serious expression when she looks up at him. This _is_ essentially a political negotiation, even if it is with his little sister. "Why does she want to leave so much anyway?"

Azula shrugs, rolls her eyes, too many dismissive movements. Zuko wishes he were a better analyst of others, because he does think there is something less than positive about her reaction. Azula is not one to make any sacrifices for others, and he doubts she feels as if she owes Ty Lee for everything Ty Lee has done for her over the years.

He thinks she has _some_ ulterior motive; he just has no idea exactly what. He tries not to care, because he _knows_ that it's a given and he knows that he should just avoid those sorts of things he has no desire to know about her.

Is that wrong? Is that evasive? Is that permissive? Probably all three of those things.

Does she play into his guilt far too often? Does her pretty face hide an evil mind?

Yes. Both of those things.

"I'll take it to be reviewed," Zuko says, in spite of all of that knowledge. "Is it ready?"

He looks at the perfect characters, and her less than perfect signature. Strange mixture, but he is not sure why. She hands him the parchment and lets him walk away.

Azula does not know that the beginning of the end is sparked by that one signed and stamped piece of paper.


	2. Kittens

**Kittens**

"This is really out in the middle of..." Ty Lee hesitates, because _nowhere_ with Azula is better than _somewhere_ with anybody else. Or so she thinks, because she and Azula have lit up their relationship like a candle covered in flammable oil and she does not want to slow down for fear of it fizzling out.

"I know. But we'll find a way to make it nice, I'm sure," Azula says honestly. "It's a family relic, I know, but I coerced my brother into renovating it. That man has so much _guilt_... it would be impossible _not_ to manipulate him."

"Right," Ty Lee agrees, latching onto Azula's arm and tugging her through the clean, crisp garden and into the very beautiful manorial home.

Ty Lee likes it, even if it's far away from her friends. She likes to stare out from the window of she and Azula's bedroom and drink in the amazing view of the zillions of trees stretching out for zillions of miles before they hit volcanic mountain ridges.

* * *

Ty Lee gets pets because even though she loves Azula, their house is lonely together. She was out at the market, which is the only place she ever really manages to get to for the past month of romantic (and quite sexy) isolation. And right there are two little kittens and they are _perfect_. They're dark black with this huge goldish yellowish eyes and Ty Lee thinks that they are _destined_ to give she and Azula some desperately needed company.

Azula is at home when Ty Lee arrives, and the princess looks... concerned.

"Are you okay?" Ty Lee asks as the two kittens fight to get out of her arms and into the warm house in the hills.

"Of course. You took a long time," Azula says and there is definitely something _colder_ than usual about her words, but she goes in and out from day to day.

"Yeah, because I found these," Ty Lee announces with a huge smile, kneeling to set down the two kitties. They bound around. One of them is slower and seems to want to rest, but the other dashes directly at Azula and starts rubbing against her ankles. "Aww, they love you!"

Azula shrugs carelessly, but Ty Lee thinks she can see this compassion within her eyes.

* * *

"Don't wake the kitties," Ty Lee whispers, pressing one finger against Azula's lips. She nearly claws out Azula's eye and the princess grabs onto the mattress to keep from lashing out and fighting back.

She is jumpy. She is way too jumpy all the time and Ty Lee just _tests_ it as if she is not the one responsible for Azula and how _afraid_ she is beneath her perfectly composed and regal exterior.

"Don't do _that_ to me," Azula snaps, lying back and complying with Ty Lee's desire to spare her new pet kittens the sounds of humans having sex.

"I'm sleepy. And I love you," Ty Lee says, gently rubbing her head against Azula's arm. She makes purring noises and Azula finds it cute enough to withhold from reminding Ty Lee yet again exactly _whose_ fault it is when Azula winds up having some kind of _relapse_ or _nightmare_.

Azula gently strokes Ty Lee's neck.

"You would be a very good pet," Azula says honestly and Ty Lee laughs, messing up her perfect purring impression.

"I would," she says eagerly, kissing Azula's elbow and lying down flat on her back. "I will be your pet, if you want."

Azula does not answer and Ty Lee feels her tummy churn with worry.

"I didn't mean to upset you," Ty Lee hastily says, her heart now racing with nerves instead of the fun of Azula, and kitties and their bed and their new life together.

"You didn't, of course," Azula says softly but Ty Lee does not know if she believes her or not.

And it makes her so uneasy.


	3. Divorce

**Divorce**

* * *

 _"_ You might as well just leave me and get a divorce and take one of the cats! You said _you loved me_!" Azula screams and Ty Lee bursts into tears like a little _child_.

"How could you say I _don't_?" she squeals.

* * *

Ty Lee has been with Azula and their very happy two kitties for five months now, and she feels kind of like she has become some kind of hermit but with a perfect family of four. So, when Mai is nearby and demands Ty Lee's presence, Ty Lee begs and begs and begs and begs for two weeks before Azula sighs and gives in.

She sits with Mai and sips her tea very halfheartedly. She has just told Mai about the worst fight ever sort of with Azula and how it ended with a bedroom that was in ashes and Ty Lee has been trying to renovate because Azula won't do anything about it because she shouldn't have to, being a princess.

Mai listens and has to force herself not to pin Ty Lee to a wall with several knives and get one of the Kyoshi Warriors to come abduct her and smuggle her out of the country. Years of perfectly blank expressions have worked in her favor, she supposes.

"Why do you think Azula is at fault? Do you hate her or something?" Ty Lee snaps the minute Mai even makes a small _sound_ of protest. "She is a wonderful pet parent and a wonderful wife person and I completely love her and we are perfect together except I mean I betrayed her and that's... her mom abandoned her and she has so many abandonment issues, Mai."

Mai does not seem to understand that very simple fact.

"Because poor, poor fucked up Princess Azula just needs someone to love her," Mai says dryly and she can see it does nothing for Ty Lee. "You don't owe her anything even if she says so."

"I _do_ , though. I _do_..." and Ty Lee crumbles and Mai contains her need to _shake sense_ into that girl.

"You were really happy before. I mean, you're always happy, but you weren't dependent on anyone else. You're changing and I don't like it and I bet no one else would like it if you talked to them anymore. Your friends. Do you remember your friends?"

"I do, and I see them all the time. The fact that I only see them during political things and events _is_ because of Azula _yeah_ but it's because she can't leave the Fire Nation but I see them whenever I can which is totally normal for _adults_!" Ty Lee shrieks and she does not care about the people gawking at her.

Mai wants to say more; she wants to say more _so much_. But she doesn't want to waste her breath or get any further into this.

"I can see I'm not going to change your mind. But I will say that I warned you and if you somehow manage to come to your senses, I'm... here." Mai does not know if she means that emotionally or in the sense that this is where Ty Lee could find her, but her old friend does not say a word.

Mai gets up and does not hesitate from divorcing herself from her old life.

She wishes Ty Lee could do the same, but, to be honest, Ty Lee has never wanted to leave it all behind and start over like she said for years.

Ty Lee never did for a second.


	4. Rehab, Wine and Denial

**Rehab**

* * *

Ty Lee does not know when she is going to learn.

She doesn't think she ever will, actually. She doesn't know if there is any way for her to figure this out in the first place. She just knows that it is beyond important for Azula to get better when she gets worse, and so Ty Lee takes full responsibility for whatever will come of that.

"How are you feeling today?" Ty Lee asks quietly, and then adds, "Good or bad?"

 _Good or bad?_ is how they start every single morning, and sometimes other times of day. Azula needs to be asked that. No matter the answer, Ty Lee keeps going with the rehabilitation.

Much of it is sexual rehabilitation, because it is what Azula responds to best, and Ty Lee likes it. It is easier to pretend that this is not a Sisyphean task if she is in bed with Azula, who makes her feel so good she literally screams ceaselessly.

Ty Lee is what Azula needs in her life.

Ty Lee is all Azula needs in her life.

Ty Lee loves that feeling of being needed and special and Azula holds it over her head whenever the princess needs to exploit her.

Ty Lee enjoys being exploited, or so she tries to tell herself.

* * *

 **Wine**

* * *

Dry lightning cracks across the sky and Ty Lee is half-drunk and half-asleep on the sofa.

Ty Lee needs to tune out of reality, because playing pretend while playing house is getting too difficult. Azula is so unstable, more and more. Ty Lee knows that Azula loves her beyond belief.

 _No one has ever loved anybody like this._

Azula just shows it in the only way she knows; she never had a healthy relationship to look at in her life. Ty Lee understands that. The jealousy is so sweet and flattering and sexy. Azula's threat to kill anyone who looked at Ty Lee too long, and to kill anyone Ty Lee looked at too long is the type of romance that people criticize only because they don't believe in true love. Or see how having true love in your life means that there are prices to pay.

The bottle of wine Ty Lee drank the entirety of glass by glass is meant as a pain killer.

Because the burns on her collarbones are part of the price to pay for true love everlasting.

* * *

 **Denial**

* * *

"Ty Lee, listen to me," Mai says and there is more conviction in her tone than Ty Lee has ever heard before. "You are going to leave her. That's what you have to do because if you don't, you will end up dead. It's not even a question now."

Mai seems _concerned_ and that makes Ty Lee's stomach do backflips. It must be bad in Mai's eyes if she is willing to expend that much emotion, but Ty Lee has a thousand reasons why Mai is wrong.

"I'm not even supposed to be here. I should be with her, because she doesn't treat me like I'm totally helpless!" Ty Lee snaps. "Azula needs me; she doesn't think I'm some weak little dumb schoolgirl who doesn't understand that love requires sacrifice!"

"She loves controlling you," Mai whispers and Ty Lee snarls a wordless shout of rage.

"You are so jealous. You are jealous because you don't have anybody, even Zuko, and I have a perfect romance!"

Mai sighs. It's futile.

Ty Lee's time is running out and Mai does not know how to save her.


	5. Ice Water

**Ice Water**

* * *

Miles from Princess Azula, the worst monsoon this summer has caused a deluge that destroyed a village. The ice cold rainwater drowned hundreds indiscriminately, the frigid flood was enough to level buildings and the lightning set fire to the rain.

But Azula wouldn't have cared even if she knew. The natural disaster only made her bitter because this one body was so much more important than the hundreds of others. Yet, today would only be remembered by the cataclysmic flood and not the tempestuous tragedy in a gorgeous mountain home.

 _Ty Lee has died a thousand times before she dies in the strictest sense of the word._

 _She is lying there, so perfect, so flawless. Ty Lee is laid out like some kind of martyr, even though she has done nothing but die at the hands of a monster. The sheets were already crimson, but now they are dark with the blood soaking them, and Azula's light, nearly sheer nightgown is stained dark red and sticks to her skin._

 _And her_ _hands_ _; she does not think her hands will ever be clean again._

 _There is so much blood. Azula has never seen so much blood in her life and it has stained her body red, and the burns on her hands and arms are stinging with the fluid. Burns from her own bending, because she lost the perfect control she maintains._

 _Everybody Azula knows just goes away in the end._

 _And now it is forever. Now it is forever._

Azula plunges herself into the bath she has just drawn as thunder roars outside. The water is _so cold_ , unlike the scalding heat she loves so much. But the cold is good, the cold is numbing, the cold feels like it is washing the blood away but Azula just feels like there is more and more.

She remembers being in cold water at one point as a child but she really isn't sure when. She closes her eyes and then it strikes her, and she wishes she wasn't sure when still. Caught in riptide on Ember Island; Zuko had just managed to flail himself out of it, of course, and mother didn't even notice Azula way out on the water, half drowned, because she was so busy protecting him.

Protecting. Stop. No. Awful word, shouldn't have thought it.

 _Coddling_ him. There. Father told her that he would have helped her, but he wanted to see if she could save herself. She did, of course, because she remembered a book she had read years before of military survival skills that explained how to escape riptides.

Is that the first time she experienced such harsh abandonment and betrayal? No. It probably was long, long before then. Throwing toys onto the floor. No one picks it up. Father does. Father does again.

" _Did you kill her? Did you kill mother?"_

 _"No. Maybe. That's not something you're permitted to ask."_

The bath is making her tremble already and she doesn't bother warming herself because it doesn't even cross her mind for half a second. She is trying to be very far away, but she is stuck, so stuck, on memories and thoughts that remind her of what nightmare she is trying to use this bath to wake up from.

" _You wouldn't do that. Would you do that?"_

 _"I did."_

 _"Would you kill me?"_

 _"Only for the same reason as her. To protect her."_

* * *

Zuko is shocked to see Mai. Yeah, he comes across her now and then and they have casual conversation. Okay, maybe a few trysts, but those never bloomed into more than that. She has never approached him like this, shoving her way past guards who stammer about her having to make an appointment.

He thinks she's amazing.

"I'm kinda dealing with a horrible flood that is going to make really bad things happen in the Fire Nation," Zuko says, relieved to be able to drop the wise, articulate Fire Lord act and just be _him_.

"I'm kinda dealing with a..." Mai hesitates. "Feeling." The word struggles to come out of her mouth, and she chokes slightly on the last syllable. "Look, a feeling that something is messed up. I'm worried about your sister. Ty Lee was freaking out about her before the storm. She was absurdly worked up over Azula having some kind of mental break, which isn't surprising to anyone but her for some reason. But the storm just..."

"Did you check on them?" Zuko asks and Mai swallows. She isn't saying something. It's behind her eyes and he knows; she is too afraid to do it. Mai is fearless and objective, and Zuko knows it is serious if she is that scared. "I'll send some soldiers stationed nearby."

"I'll... go with them."

* * *

Fire Lord Zuko winds up arriving to see Azula shaking, her hair drenched, like she did when she came out of that riptide when they were little kids. He remembers that day being angry at his mother for one of the only times, and angrier at his father. He begins to walk towards Azula, but he turns his head and sees Mai slowly walking towards him instead.

Zuko stares at the cacography of the Imperial Officer.

"I don't..." he says as he locks her eyes. He doesn't know if he believes any of it.

He doesn't know what was going to come next but it could be any number of things and still work. He is shocked. He is horrified. He does not know what to say about the horrific sight within those beautiful walls past that very well kept garden of pink flowers.

Silent tears roll from Mai's eyes.

Zuko has never seen her cry.

But Mai can barely keep from sobbing.

* * *

"You're... okay," Zuko attempts weakly, because Azula utterly refuses to respond to anyone. Mai looks... _angry and sad_ and kind of like she is going to...

Slit Azula's throat. That's an awful word. Zuko should not have even thought that word because it makes him feel sick.

"You have no idea if I'm okay or not." Azula pauses. "But I am. Of course I am."

She is so distant.

"I'm going to..." Zuko glances over his shoulder at Mai and sees the red streaks on her hands. The blood is ice cold but still damp and shiny. "I'm going to protect you from this."

He had hoped she wouldn't hear him, but she looks right up at Zuko.

It's raining again. Fuck. No, worse fuck, it's freezing rain and maybe hail.

"You're _not_ going to protect her, Zuko," Mai says, walking towards them. Zuko expects one of them to prepare for combat, but neither does. "Because that's exactly what caused _this_." She gestures loosely with her bloodstained hands at the flooded garden that is no longer impeccable as Ty Lee kept it. "Because poor, poor fucked up Princess Azula just needs someone to love her. You don't owe her anything and this is unforgivable because she should have known better."

Mai wants to say Ty Lee should have known better too, but she can't stomach it. It feels wrong to speak ill of the dead.

"I never said I just needed someone to love me," Azula says icily as she recoils away from the rain. Her hair is already frozen. "I simply didn't want anyone else to leave me. I can't think of who could have caused Ty Lee to do such a thing as betray me."

"Mai!" Zuko shouts, but by the time he grabs her arm, she has already punched Azula in the nose. "Mai! Mai, fuck, you can't...! What do you want me to do? Have her executed?"

"No. I want the opposite of that," Mai says as she looks at her fist. The wet blood of one of her best friends' has reawakened the half-dried blood of the other. "I want her to live with the knowledge that it's her fault that the thing she loved most was taken away, just like your dad and his bending."

Zuko tries to say it isn't. Azula chokes on the nosebleed as she can't seem to figure out how to quell it with her cold, damp hands.

Azula glances up at Zuko and Mai and the police officers who look somehow sick.

She hears lightning crash in the sky. She hears the whispers of things like, _she was so young and pretty. didn't deserve this._

She looks into the puddle that is too crystalline. She takes a look at herself and sees a beautiful monster.

The forecasted hail starts falling, disrupting the puddle and destroying Azula's reflection. Mai walks away with her fists clenched, Zuko stares blankly, and the reality hits Azula like a deluge.

 _"She'll never leave you now. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"_


End file.
